Mental masturbation - a design adjudicated as being the product of wheel spinning, poor assimilation of criteria, outright banality, experimentation that didn't fall within the acceptable continuum of current trendy vernacular, and/or incoherent thought

Value engineering - this is a very structured process, in which some people specialize as consultants and it is employed in mega projects, while some architects think it's bargaining over design elements over the conference room table and a cup of coffee. The latter is cost reduction or "axing" things. So, the loose use of the term VE is fucking clueless.